Spanish Police on Sunday seized three tons of cocaine worth US$121 million dollars in a submarine moving across the Atlantic Ocean from Colombia to Spain, according to the UK newspaper Daily Mail.
Police claimed that the cocaine was loaded on the first ever “narco submarine” to cross the Atlantic Ocean for 7,690 kilometers.
The 65-foot vessel was seized by the police in cooperation with Interpol in the northwestern region of Galicia.
Two Ecuadorian members of the three-person crew were arrested after they raided the vessel, the police said, while the third member, who is Spanish, is currently on the run.
Global cocaine production reached an all-time high in 2018, breaking the previous year’s record by 25 percent, the UN drugs and crime agency said in June in its annual report, as production soars in post-conflict Colombia. New remote fields and criminal gangs boosted production in the world’s top supplier, despite efforts to steer rural communities away from coca cultivation following a peace deal with FARC rebels.
Edited translation from Al-Masry Al-Youm
